H.E. Noura bint Mohammed Al Kaabi

Al Kaabi has been President of Zayed University since 2018 and Chair of the National Commission for Education, Culture and Science. She is the chairperson of the Higher Committee for UAE Pavilion at Expo Dubai 2021.

She is on the Board of Trustees of the International Institute for Tolerance, in addition to being the vice chair of the Abu Dhabi Media Company.

She was the first Emirati to be chosen by the Foreign Policy magazine as one among the 100 global thinkers in 2013. The Forbes Middle East Council named her among the 30 most influential Arab women in the government sector. In 2015, she was honored by the American Association for Foreign Media (AAM) in recognition of her role in the growth of the UAE media industry.

She holds a BA in Management Information Systems from the United Arab Emirates University. She completed an Executive Leadership Program at London Business School in 2011.

H.E. AbdulRahman bin Mohammed Al Owais

His Excellency Abdul Rahman Al Owais (UAE, 1967) is a Cabinet Member and Minister of Health and Prevention and Minister of State for Federal National Council Affairs. He joined the federal Government in 2006 as the Minister of Culture, Youth and Community Development. Chairman of the Dubai Culture and Arts Authority, he is a Board Member of Dubai Healthcare City, the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum International Photography Award, Member of the Board of Trustees for the Sheikh Hamdan Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Awards for Medical Sciences, Member of the Board of Directors of the Emirates Foundation for Philanthropy and a Member of the Board of Trustees of Sultan Bin Ali Al Owais Cultural Foundation since 1992. He is also the 1st Vice President of the UAE National Olympic Committee.

Muna Easa Al Gurg

Muna Easa Al Gurg is a businesswoman and philanthropist from Dubai. She is Director of Retail at Easa Saleh Al Gurg Group and is on several boards of directors including for non-profit organizations. Muna is Chairwoman of Young Arab Leaders, a fellow of the Middle East Leadership Initiative of the Aspen Institute, a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network and board member of Al Gurg Charity Foundation.

Since 2008, has been Chairwoman of Young Arab Leaders UAE. In 2015 she launched the Muna Al Gurg Scholarship at London Business School. Al Gurg is a member of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Sustainability Board, mandated to provide innovative and sustainable solutions to refugees in the MENA region.

At the Easa Saleh Al Gurg Charity Foundation, she is responsible for strategy and initiatives both in the UAE and internationally, including primary education support for underprivileged children in Zanzibar. Muna has been listed in the ‘Women of Influence in the Arab world 2021’ by CEO Middle East.

Abdelmonem Bin Eisa Alserkal

Emirati businessman and patron Abdelmonem Bin Eisa Alserkal is the founder of Alserkal, a socially responsible cultural enterprise, and its initiatives: Alserkal Avenue, Alserkal Arts Foundation, and Concrete. Concrete was shortlisted for the 2019 Aga Khan Award for Architecture.

Abdelmonem serves on the boards of numerous art and business institutions around the world, including the British Museum’s Contemporary and Modern Middle Eastern Art Acquisition Group; the Tate’s Middle East and North Africa Acquisition Committee; the Guggenheim’s Middle Eastern Circle; and Etisalat Telecommunications Group Company PJSC (Etisalat). He is also a Supporter of the Centre Pompidou International Circle – Middle East.

Abdelmonem is also the managing director of Nasser Bin Abdullatif Alserkal Est., a Dubai-based family business with diversified interests in the UAE and internationally, and serves as a member of the board of the Alserkal Group.

Abdelmonem and the Alserkal family have long been supporters of the arts and have been awarded the UAE Patron of the Arts award twice.

H.E. Mohammad Al-Murr

His Excellency Mohammad Al-Murr (UAE, 1955) is Chairman of the Dubai Historical District Development Committee, Chairman of the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Library Foundation and a Trustee of the Emirates Literature Foundation. He graduated from Syracuse University in the United States and has been a member of several UAE academic institutions and councils. In 2011 Al Murr was appointed to the Federal National Council’s 15th Chapter as a representative of the Emirate of Dubai and served as the speaker from 2011 to 2015. Mohammad Al-Murr is also a short-story writer who has published over 15 volumes of short stories and has had two collections translated into English: Dubai Tales and The Wink of the Mona Lisa.

Munira Al Sayegh

Munira Al Sayegh (UAE, 1989), an independent curator based in Abu Dhabi, UAE, worked with NYUAD as an assistant producer on the FIND project (2012), as co-curator of Art Dubai Projects (2014), assistant curator of Emirati Expressions (2015), and curator of Bayn: the in-between, the third edition of U.A.E Unlimited (2017).

Al Sayegh was a curator on the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi exhibition The Creative Act: Performance, Process, Presence (2017), which she worked on alongside the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi project as programmes officer (2015-2017) and whilst curating the Abu Dhabi Art talks programme (2017).

In 2019, she curated the Residents section of Art Dubai, was the lead tutor for Campus Art Dubai and started the Now series, highlighting non-government funded creative platforms in the region.

In 2020, Al Sayegh curated her biggest exhibition The Cup and The Saucer, commissioned by Warehouse421.

Antonia Carver

Antonia Carver (UK, 1971) is Director of Art Jameel, leading teams in Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and overseeing programmes across learning and the arts. She joined in 2016 with a mandate to develop the Jameel Arts Centre, Dubai (which opened as Dubai’s contemporary arts museum in November 2018), and Hayy Jameel, Jeddah (opening November 2021), and to institute a new period of radical growth for the organisation. Among other roles, Carver was previously Director of Art Dubai (2010-2016); Projects Director at Bidoun; in strategy and programming at Dubai International Film Festival; an editor at Phaidon; and has written extensively on Middle Eastern art and film.

Venetia Porter

Venetia Porter (UK, 1955) is a curator of Islamic and Contemporary Middle East art at the British Museum. She has a BA in Arabic and Persian, an MPhil in Islamic Art from the University of Oxford and a PhD from the University of Durham on the history and architecture of Medieval Yemen.

She has curated two major exhibitions at the British Museum, Word into Art (2006) and Hajj: journey to the heart of Islam (2012) and was the lead curator for the Albukhary Foundation Gallery of the Islamic World which opened in October 2018.

Her research and publications, including Islamic Tiles (1995), Arabic and Persian Seals and Amulets in the British Museum (2011) range from Arabic inscriptions to contemporary art and she is a contributor to The Islamic World: A history through objects (2018).

Nada Shabout

Dr. Nada Shabout (UK, 1962) is a Professor of Art History and Coordinator of the Contemporary Arab and Muslim Cultural Studies Initiative (CAMCSI) at the University of North Texas, and is the founding president of the Association for Modern and Contemporary Art from the Arab World, Iran and Turkey (AMCA).

Along with curating exhibitions and receiving a number of prestigious awards, Shabout was the Project Advisor for the Saudi National Pavilion, Venice Biennale 2019, has been elected to the College Art Association (CAA) Board of Directors (2020-2024), and appointed a member of the Board of Directors of the Visual Arts Commission at the Ministry of Culture of Saudi Arabia (2020-2023).

Leading an AMCA team, she received a Getty Foundation Grant to support the project “Mapping Art Histories from the Arab World, Iran and Turkey” and, in addition, is working on a book, Demarcating Modernism in Iraqi Art: The Dialectics of the Decorative, 1951-1979, with the American University in Cairo Press.

Maryam Al Dabbagh

Maryam Wissam Al Dabbagh (UAE, 1982) is a writer, researcher, and the co-founder of Rouya Consultancy, specialising in cultural communications. She received a BA in Journalism from the American University of Sharjah and an MA in Global Media and Post-National Communications from SOAS, London. Her research is focused on the Arab Diaspora in the Gulf, and exile, especially through the lens of language, belonging and return. Al Dabbagh has translated several art catalogues and books to Arabic, and was recently commissioned by Art Jameel as part of their experimental research and exhibition series: The Library Circles.

Catherine David

Catherine David (France, 1954) is a French-born art historian and curator and Deputy Director of Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris. She has worked at the Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, the Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume, Paris and the Witte de With Center of Contemporary Art in Rotterdam. In 1997, she was Artistic Director for documenta X in Kassel and in 1998, served as Director of Contemporary Arab Representations.